Unusa Karimu’s people, the Mbororo, are a marginalised semi-nomadic community of cattle herders in Cameroon. The daily persecution and exploitation they face at the hands of government and wealthy elites inspired Mr Karimu to become a lawyer so he could defend their human rights in court. Karimu talks to Salman Shaheen about his struggle against economic hardship to become the Mbororo’s first and only barrister and the far more difficult struggle to win equality for his people.

It is said that the cow is the mother of all civilization. Of all the images of India, few are more enduring or endearing than that of the cow, revered by Hindus for its life-giving milk, roaming free in the city streets. But this postcard picture belies a darker truth. India is the world’s largest exporter of leather. And whilst the killing of cows is banned in all but two states, in the world of the illegal leather trade, animal rights abuses are rife as the country cashes in on its most sacred symbol to meet the Western desire for leather.

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day,” goes the old Chinese proverb. “Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Nowadays, with massive trawlers dragging 60 km nets scooping up a dozen jumbo jets worth of fish in one go, that adage is looking rather shaky. Not only is overfishing the single greatest threat to the ecosystems of our oceans, but as fish are caught much faster than they can reproduce, it is driving traditional fisherman out of business.

What do George Bernard Shaw, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Leo Tolstoy, Leonardo Da Vinci, Paul McCartney, and Pythagoras have in common? If your answer is they’re all towering figures of European culture, you’re only half right. The answer is: they’ve all been passionate promoters of vegetarianism. While Pythagoras dealt with three straight lines, McCartney sang about the long and winding road. Indeed, the effort to promote vegetarianism has been a very long and very winding road. But with the former Beatle’s initiative of meat-free Mondays, and the Belgian town of Ghent pledging to go vegetarian one day a week to do its share for the planet, the only direction that road is heading is forward.